


How to Not Do the Dishes (And Other Ways to Fail at Cleaning)

by tantarted (tanyart)



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Curtain Fic, Domestic, Friendship, Gen, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-30
Updated: 2009-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-05 12:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanyart/pseuds/tantarted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is chore day at the RED base, and Scout just wants to finish washing the damn dishes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Not Do the Dishes (And Other Ways to Fail at Cleaning)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Secret Santa exchange for [******]. I had undiluted loads of fun with the prompt.
> 
> And thanks to pellucere for the motivation and beta! You rock, girl.

It was sort of a weird thing to say, but Scout liked chore days.  There was a chart in the kitchen that Engineer made, assigning various jobs around the base every two Saturdays.  It worked pretty okay for the first two months, but like their mercenary work, there were certain things somebody would be better at than the rest of them, and so everyone started to switch up the chores when it suited them.    
   
Scout, for one, liked washing dishes.  Well, he didn’t _like_-like it, but he’d rather be elbow-deep in soapy water than dirty laundry.  Scrubbing away at Fatty Mike’s Diner all last summer taught him everything he needed to know about washing dishes—loading the washer to its fullest capacity, getting that dried sauce stain from the pot, using the right kind of soap—it was all second nature to him, and he was used to cleaning up after eight other guys.  Hell, his brothers back home were ten times worse than the entire RED team.  
   
This week he was supposed to be dusting, but if there was anything Scout hated more than rainbows, it was waving around a fruity feather poof in every nook and cranny of the base.  Naturally, Spy was good at that stuff, so it made sense to trade chores with him.    
   
“I got it, I got it!” Scout said, running into the kitchen with the duster, “I told you I’d do it.”  
   
Spy looked up from the sink, grimacing at the piles of dirty dishes he was faced with.  With the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up to his elbows and his usual black gloves replaced with bulky yellow ones, Scout couldn’t help but grin.  
   
“You are lucky I have already washed all the knives, boy,” Spy scowled, attempting to scratch his nose with a forearm.  He gestured to the chore chart.  “I only assumed that you had changed your mind.”  
   
Scout glanced at the chart.  He had forgotten to switch their names—“sorry, my fault—” but he decided not to tell Spy about the trail of foam over his left cheek.  Handing over the feather duster, he nudged Spy out of the way.  “Right, now let the master handle this.”  
   
“Indeed,” Spy said drily, pulling off the yellow rubber gloves and heading out the kitchen, “Oh, Medic says he is doing the laundry in ten minutes.”  
   
Scout, already attacking the dishes with soap, groaned. “Aw, shoot! Hey, Spy, could you do me a—”  
   
But Spy was already gone, leaving Scout to swear and wipe his hands on his pants while he ran to his bunk.  It took a good minute to frantically scoop arm loads of his dirty clothes into a hamper, and even then Scout left a trail of stained shirts leading into the basement.  
   
Medic was in the laundry room, sorting through the massive piles of the team’s clothes.  It stank something awful in there, which was why Scout always avoided doing the laundry, and if Soldier was always willing to do it every two weeks, it was fine by him.  Holding his breath, Scout set his overloaded hamper down, just in time to see Medic toss a handful of underwear into one of the washers.  
   
“That’s gross, doc.”  
   
“Do you think I don’t already know that?”  
   
“Yeah, well,” Scout began, pulling out his own underwear and putting them into the washer, “Just thought you could use the reminder.  And doesn’t Soldier usually do the laundry?”  
   
Medic gave an audible huff when Scout accidentally flung a pair of brown pants into the pile of red shirts.  “I was sick of sewing.  It’s bad enough that I have to sew you dummkopfs up on the battlefield every day, so I traded chores with Soldier.”  
   
While Medic doing the laundry seemed perfectly acceptable to Scout, the image of Soldier holding a needle and thread made Scout cringe, like a sack of bricks just landed on his head.  “No way!  Soldier sews?”  
   
“He does.”  
   
“Dude, that’s crazy.  I mean, sewing? Soldier?  Man, that’s really g—“ Scout caught himself in time and stuttered to a halt.  Medic was giving him one of those exasperated looks, though the humidity of the room had partly fogged his glasses, so the German was looking kind of creepy.   
   
“Really what?” Medic asked in a way that suggested that Scout had better be careful about the choice of his next words.  
   
“Really great.  Sewing is really great,” Scout finished with a strange hitch in his throat that made his voice go higher. “Yeah.  It takes a lot of talent to do that stuff.”  
   
“Oh, I agree,” Medic smiled, “Speaking of which, Scout, half your shirts aren’t even shirts anymore.”  He held up a particularly bad one—the one Scout had worn the day he tumbled off the bridge into the sewer water.  The sleeve had snagged on something when he fell, leaving behind an impressive tear at the seams.  
   
“I was going to have you fix them,” Scout grumbled, feeling like a berated kid.  It happened a lot with Medic.    
   
“Go see Soldier, and take these to Heavy outside.”  
   
The doctor had shoved a large basket of bed linens into Scout’s arms, still wet from the washer.  Nine beds' worth of sheets weren’t anything to sneeze at, and Scout staggered under the weight.  
   
“Hey! I still got to do the dishes!  Those things don’t wash on their own, you know,” Scout complained, balancing the basket on one knee while he grabbed his torn shirts.  
   
“Yes, and those bed sheets aren’t going to dry on their own either,” Medic said, pushing him out of the laundry room and slamming the door shut.  
   
Scout didn’t like to admit how long it took to figure _that_ out.  “Bed sheets _do_ dry on their own, asshole!” he shouted over his shoulder.  He thought about leaving the basket in the hallway, but then everyone would end up getting mad at him and it wasn’t worth the trouble just to spite Medic.  He’d find some other way.  Muttering under his breath, Scout headed over to Soldier’s room.  
   
The older man was sitting on his bed, snapping a thread off with his teeth.  One of Sniper’s shirts was in his lap and Scout could see the faint outline of stitching.  He didn’t know much about sewing, but the repaired shirt looked pretty good.  
   
“Holy shit, I almost didn’t believe Medic when he told me you could sew,” Scout whistled lowly.  
   
Soldier grunted, not looking up as he inspected Sniper’s shirt for any other holes. “You mean _you_ can’t, private?”   
   
Scout paused. “Uh, no?”  
   
“Boy, you’re in the middle of a war and you don’t know how to patch up your own clothes?” Soldier said, glancing up, “How the hell do you expect to go out in the battlefield with old bullet holes in your uniform?”  
   
Taken by surprise, Scout started to back away from the malicious gleam in Soldier’s eyes.  “Hey, Medic’s always fixing our shit, so I just figured that—well, nevermind, I just wanted to drop these off.”  He held out his shirts, hoping that Soldier would lay off for once.  But of course he didn’t.  
   
“Private! It ain’t regulation for you uniform to look like it’s been ass-crapped until after you’ve killed at least a dozen BLUs!” Soldier roared, standing up, “You are going to come here tomorrow at oh-five hundred hours. You are going to bring fabric! You are going to hustle your ass to the nearest store and get a size three cotton darner needle! You will come here and you will start learning what your momma should’ve taught you, or, by god, I will take a shovel to your head and—“  
   
During Soldier’s rant, Scout had prudently left his shirts in the to-mend pile and picked up Medic’s basket.  
   
“Yeah! Okay! I’ll be here at five,” he said, just to get Soldier to shut up and, like what he did to solve most his problems, he ran out the door with Soldier still screaming at him.  He just had to give the bed sheets to Heavy to hang up and then he could finally do the dishes.  
   
Heavy, Scout knew, was outside at the back of the base.  He found the big Russian hanging pairs of slacks on the makeshift clothesline that was tied to one end of the base and a crooked pole.    
   
“Dry some more!” Heavy bellowed, much to Scout’s amusement and concern.  Talking to a gun was one thing, but wet laundry must be crossing some line.  Still, Heavy was an alright guy, even thanked him for delivering the wet laundry.  
   
“Take these to Pyro; they are dry,” Heavy added, putting a firm hand on Scout’s shoulder when he had tried to make his escape.  
   
Scout slumped forward and exhaled loudly.  
   
More or less resigned, he held out his arm for Heavy to drape a few shirts over.  They looked like they were Spy’s and Medic’s, and Scout figured that they’d be the only two who would care about getting their stuff ironed.  
   
Scout started to make his way back in the base, but he figured that someone was going to show up.  A few seconds after that thought, Sniper appeared, grabbing his arm, yammering something in that Australian accent of his.  Scout wiggled free from his grasp, but stayed put, wondering what had gotten Sniper so excited about.  The older man was not exactly unsociable, but Scout had always pegged him to be a quiet kind of guy, so seeing Sniper all jittery was weird.  
   
“Your whats are ready?” he asked, throwing the shirts over his shoulder.  
   
“Strawberries!” Sniper said, grinning, “C’mon, you have to see.”  
   
Trying very hard not to sigh, Scout followed Sniper up the rickety ladder onto the roof behind the battlements.   He had been up there a few times to bother Sniper when he was bored and desperate enough to listen to him ramble about his plants.  As far as Scout could tell, Sniper only kept three giant pots—tomato, cucumber, and strawberries.  There used to be more, but the BLU assholes had once fired a rocket on the roof and Sniper had spent weeks taking his revenge by going out of his way to snipe the enemy soldier repeatedly.  
   
“Well, that’s nice—“ Scout began, but stopped when he saw the bright red fruit among the tiny leaves, “—dude, those were just little green nubs the last time I was here.”  
   
“Weren’t they?” Sniper agreed. “Blimey, I think Demo’ll be making us a dessert for tonight.”  
   
“Aw, hell yeah!” Scout whooped, throwing his fist into the air.  Given his expertise with mixing chemicals, Demoman was a mean cook in the kitchen.  Chore-day meals were especially great, made to encourage everyone after a hard day’s work, though Scout liked pretty much anything Demoman made, fancy or not.  
   
And it was hard not to grin either with Sniper looking so proud of himself.  Still, dinner wasn’t going to happen if the dishes were still dirty.  
   
“Well, I better get to washing the dishes or we’ll be eating with our hands of something,” Scout said, but not before Sniper plucked a strawberry from the pot and tossed it to him.   
   
“One for the road then,” he said, and glanced up at the sky with, adding, “Getting sort of cloudy up there.”  
   
Scout caught the strawberry and took a polite look at the clouds before taking a bite.  
   
“Holy shit, it’s sweet,” he called out as he made his way down the ladder.  
   
“Mate, you wouldn’t believe what I use for fertilizer, but I think you should tell Heav—“  
   
“Shut it, Sniper. I don’t wanna know!” Scout shouted over the answer, not sure if Sniper was messing with him or telling the truth.  Either way, he was willing to remain ignorant when the strawberry tasted so good.  Hearing Sniper laugh made him feel a little more reassured, but not by much.   
   
Still holding on to the shirts, Scout ran into Engineer mopping the hallway—or supposed to be mopping, anyway.  He glanced down, finding old tracks and muddy footprints, but it didn’t compare with the mess of metal in front of him.  Whatever it was, Engineer was whacking it with his wrench.  
   
“What the hell is that suppose to be?” Scout asked, unable to help himself.  The kitchen was just five steps away, but it couldn’t hurt to check out what the Texan was doing.  
   
“A mopping machine,” Engineer replied, and another whack gave the machine some resemblance to a mop on wheels with an engine and bucket attached behind it.  
   
Scout watched as the machine started to move around the hallway, very slow, but nevertheless dragging the wet mop back and forth with a hiss of hot steam.  It didn’t stop mopping the small patch of floor until it shone, and Scout could practically see his reflection.  
   
“Woah, not bad, hardhat,” he said and Engineer beamed.  
   
“You could probably eat off the floor after she’s through with it.  I think I’ll call her Annie.”  
   
Which, to be honest, was a little much, but if mopping wasn’t going to be something they’d have to worry about ever again, Scout was willing to let the name slide.  
   
“Uh, cool.  Gotta get these shirts to Pyro,” he said instead, “Later.”  
   
Engineer was still looking over Annie-the-mop-machine, but managed to give Scout an absent wave.   
   
Shaking his head, Scout dashed over to Pyro’s room, found it empty, and then went over to the break room to find it decked out with hanging shirts and slacks.  Pyro was in the thick of it, armed with an iron in place of his usual flamethrower.  
   
“Mmrph?”  
   
“Yup, more shirts,” Scout said, dumping them into Pyro’s basket.  He wrinkled his nose at the strong smell of starch, and sniffed again when he caught a whiff of something burning.  He glanced down at the dress shirt Pyro was ironing and found that it had burnt, iron-shaped imprints, arranged into a neat circle—like a flower.  
   
“Oh. Spy been giving you a hard time lately?” he asked.  
   
Pyro gave a grunt, and pressed the iron down with a hiss for emphasis.  Scout laughed.  
   
“Whatever he did, I bet the bastard deserved it.”  
   
“Mmmph!”  
   
“Right, right,” he grinned, leaving the room, only to run into Soldier. Scout groaned, wondering if he would ever get to the dishes.  “What do you want?”  
   
“That ain’t no way to talk to an officer,” Soldier warned and handed Scout his mended shirts.  
   
He had forgotten about his own shirts.  Feeling his face heat up, Scout took them and muttered, “Thanks.”  
   
“Oh-five-hundred hours.  Be there,” Soldier reminded him and did an abrupt about-face before walking away.  
   
“Man, you’re insane,” Scout retorted, but he made a mental note to set his alarm clock.  If Soldier and Medic could sew, then Scout figured he could use the lesson, no matter how girly it was.  Learning would save him the trouble of having to ask other people to fix his clothes, and he was pretty sure he saw Sniper knitting in his garden one time too.  
   
Thankfully, Medic was not in the laundry room when Scout came in to throw his mended red shirts into the churning laundry machine.  He seriously thought if one more person came to interrupt him, he was going to start whacking heads with his bat.  
   
The mad dash to the kitchen went without any more detours, incidents, and go-for missions.  Scout skidded into the kitchen where Demoman was just putting something in the oven.  
   
“Is that chicken?” Scout asked, peering over Demoman’s shoulder.  
   
“Right you are, boyo,” the man said, “Slotted with herbs and lemon, covered all nice and light with olive oil…” and continued to babble on with enthusiasm.  
   
Scout clapped Demoman on the back, not knowing all the technicalities of finer cuisine.  As long as the food ended up in his mouth, he wasn’t going to complain, not even when it was obvious that Demoman had somehow been able to cook while _drunk_.  “Sniper’s got some strawberries for tonight too.  Think you can do anything with them?”  
   
Demoman went quiet, his one eye rolling up to the ceiling in thoughtful contemplation, and after taking a consulting gulp of scrumpy, he said, “I’d rather not ruin fresh strawberries by cooking them. How ‘bout I make a cheesecake and use them as toppings?”  
   
It sounded better than anything Scout could’ve come up with so he threw his whole support to the suggestion, letting Demomon finish the rest of his scrumpy, and got to working on the dishes.  Spy had already loaded half of it, though it seemed that he left Scout with the dirtiest dishes to scrub before loading them into the washer.  
   
“Freakin’ Spy,” he muttered, slamming the washer shut and turning it on.  The loud hum of the machine drowned out the sound of Demoman’s cooking and the smells were making Scout hungry and impatient.  But with luck, everyone should be finished doing their chores by dinner time.  It took thirty minutes for the dishes to clean themselves and another twenty to put them all away, though Scout was improving his time every week.  In any case, it still left him with half an hour to kill.  
   
Glancing at the complicated array of baking tools Demoman was using, he decided not to bother asking if he could help.  
   
“When you do think the food’s gonna be done?” he asked.

But before Demoman could answer there was a crash in the hallway and suddenly Pyro dashed into the kitchen, running in a full circle around Scout before opting to hide behind the larger Demoman.  Spy was close behind, the visible parts of his face red with anger.  
   
“Those were custom made, you little demon!” Spy shouted, waving around a charred shirt, iron prints still smoking.  In his other hand was a knife, looking very shiny—Spy must have been cleaning it earlier.  
   
Pyro clutched at Demoman’s shoulders, a weird wheezing noise coming from his gasmask.  It sounded like laughter, but with Pyro it was hard to tell.  With the way Spy’s gaze darkened, Scout was betting that it was laughter.  
   
“Argh, get off,” Demoman snapped, holding a pie tin of graham cracker crust.  He sidestepped out of the way, saving himself and the cheesecake-to-be from the crossfire of Spy’s verbal assault and Pyro’s return wheezing.   
   
And it wasn’t often that Scout got to see a pyro being chased by a spy.  Grinning, he shoved Pyro out of the kitchen just before Spy lurched forward, colliding into him and knocking them to the floor, which was slick with water and smelled like artificial lemons.  Engineer’s mopping machine must have passed through the hallway already.  
   
“What the ‘ell was that for?!  I will kill the both of you!”  
   
“Mmmrph!”  
   
“Run, Pyro!”  
   
Pyro scrambled to his feet in jumble of slippery squeaks, arms flailing.  Grabbing one arm, Scout dragged the slower man around the corner.  Scout bumped into Engineer, and it was like running into a wall made of cushions.  
   
“Woah there!” Engineer said, blocking the younger boys from running into the mopping machine.  “Mind where you run—“  
   
And that was when Spy crashed into all three of them.  His knife went flying through the air, embedding itself in some crack of the mopping machine.   
   
It would have totally been fine too, Scout thought, if they hadn’t barreled straight into Annie, all of them shouting various curses or, in Engineer’s case, questions about what-in-tarnation-was-going-on-Jesus-get-away-from-Annie—  
   
Scout’s elbow must have pushed a button or maybe it could have been Pyro pulling the crank on accident, but whatever happened, Annie started to beep.  
   
Really, really loudly.  
   
“Aw, shit,” Engineer said, in the middle of putting Spy in a headlock.  
   
“What the bloody hell is going on, you bloody kids,” Demoman shouted from the kitchen.  
   
The mop machine was still beeping, very much like a sentry.  Except, well, Scout couldn’t exactly in words, but the beeping sounded even more sinister than any sentry that Scout had come across.  Engineer was edging towards it like it was some sort of spooked animal.  Pyro, Spy, and Scout continued to stare at it, mystified.  
   
“C’mon, Annie,” Engineer was saying, and the beeping stopped.   
   
Demoman walked in, obvious to the tension, with a bottle of scrumpy in his hand.  “Cheesecake’s in the oven!  Now what are all of ye’doing?”  
   
There was a pause, almost condescending, and then Annie sort of exploded.   
   
Scout couldn’t be too sure what happened but suddenly the machine was whirling around, spraying foam, hot steam, and lemon scented cleaner everywhere.  Spy and Engineer had disappeared in a pile of foam, but Pyro was clutching his arm and pointing at the mop machine, which was making its way out of the hallway.  
   
“Merde—not the rec room, I just dusted that!” Spy’s voice came from somewhere, but Annie was merciless and rumbled her way into the room.  
   
It was a long chase after that.  The runaway machine was mopping the whole first floor of the base like it had a personal grudge against the ground.  It actually wasn’t doing a bad job, but while the floor might be sparkling clean, it left the walls wet with dirty water and covered with bubbles.  Scout had gotten doused a few times, and poor Pyro couldn’t do a thing but slip and slide his way around.  Engineer was rigging up a barricade of furniture to stop Annie from going up and down the stairs because—uh, yeah, apparently she could climb stairs if she wanted to.  
   
Spy, unsuccessful in his attempt to attach a sapper to the crazy machine, was hiding behind the barricade along with Engineer and Demoman.  Scout huddled next to them, watching as foam flew to the ceiling.  Pyro was nowhere to be found.  
   
“Okay. Now what?”  
   
They looked at him, each expression blank, and Scout buried his face in his hands.  
   
“WHAT ARE YOU BABIES DOING?” Heavy’s voice boomed over the mechanical whirling.  
   
“Mmr, mmrrrph!”  
   
Scout peeked over to see Pyro holding on to Heavy’s arm and pulling the big man towards the demonic mop, which seemed determined to start cleaning the next room over by trying to mop away the walls.  Scout had no doubt the mop would eventually get there.  
   
“Heavy, grab that machine!” Engineer shouted, climbing over the barricade.   
   
There were plenty of times Scout had seen Heavy in action, but there was definitely something impressive with the way he took the mop by the handle, lifting it up so that the wet ends were spinning wildly in the air and squirting out lemony suds.  Okay, so maybe it didn’t sound exactly impressive, but the thing had been on a rampage for at least thirty minutes.  Thirty horrible minutes.  Capture point battles didn’t even last that long.   
   
Spy shot up from their hiding spot and almost threw the sapper onto the mop.  It crackled with blue sparks, hissing and smoking, but after a few seconds, it gave a weary pop and shattered.  
   
The hallway became quiet except for the sounds of dripping water from the walls.  There was foam clinging on to the ceiling, furniture wet and in the way, and an overpowering scent of lemon.  Scout decided to break the silence.  
   
“Well, at least it wasn’t my fault this time,” he said, just so that he could get himself out of the way before everyone started pointing their fingers at each other.  
   
The shouting that came with it was enough to rouse Soldier down from his room.  Of course, he could out-yell the entire team, so it was only a matter of time when everyone’s voice faded away and all that could be heard was just Soldier.  
   
“—IF YOU LADIES WOULD JUST SHUT UP, MAYBE SOMEONE COULD TELL ME WHY THE BASE SMELLS LIKE SOMETHING’S BURNING.”  
   
“Nothing ain’t burning,” Engineer said, rubbing his nose, “It’s the damn lemon scent being too strong.”  
   
Demoman’s eye widened.  “The chicken!”  
   
There was nothing that united the team quicker than food in danger.  They all rushed into the kitchen, expecting something to be on fire, but instead there was a mass of white foam filling the room.  
   
“Huh, I don’t remember the mop going in there,” Engineer said while Demoman looked on with an expression of pure devastation.  
   
“Is like snow!” Heavy said, like it pleased him.  
   
Unable to help himself, Scout waded through the foam.  He didn’t want to admit it, but Heavy had a point—a room full of bubbles was pretty awesome.  The other guys needed to lighten up.  Scooping up a handful of foam to throw, he took aim at Spy, but the rumbling of the washer made him pause.  He glanced at it, watching in horror as more suds spilled from it.  
   
“Holy shit, it’s coming from the dish washer!” he yelled, letting the foam seep through his fingers, “Shit!” Pyro, Engineer, and Demoman might have screwed up today, but there was no way in hell Scout messed up doing the dishes.  He turned towards Spy, “What the hell did you do?”  
   
“I did nothing!” Spy protested, “I put the dishes in, and the soap. That is it!”  
   
“Soap?” Scout exclaimed, rushing over to turn the washer off, “Goddammit, _I_ put in soap.  How much did you put in? Oh, my god.”  
   
“I don’t know. A squeeze, a reasonable amount.”  
   
At first, Scout didn’t understand, but when he did, he was tempted to strangle the Frenchman.  “You used the liquid soap, didn’t you?  Powder, you moron!  You freakin’ use the _powder_ for the dish washer.”  
   
Spy frowned. “They are not the same thing?”  
   
“No, numbnuts!” Scout shouted, ready to throw something hard and heavy at him.   
   
Lucky for Spy, Demoman stepped in between them, not even noticing that Scout was hefting the knife block over his shoulder.  He held the cheesecake he had managed to salvage. “It’s all right, boys!”  
   
“Well, thank-freaking-god,” Scout muttered, still gripping the block and eyeing Spy, but the rest of the team appeared relieved that the dessert had been saved.  
   
“Well, isn’t this a damn fine show of incompetence,” Soldier said after the cheesecake was safely escorted to the refrigerator.  
   
Scout glanced around the ruined kitchen and nearly shuddered at the idea of having to clean the rest of the soapy base.  
   
“Mein Gott,” Medic said, poking his head into the flooded kitchen, “I am not even going to ask.”  
   
“Mmmph,” Pyro nodded.  
   
“I am, however, going to ask who put their red shirt into the washing machine,” Medic continued, walking in and carrying a laundry basket full of—Scout felt his whole body grow cold—pink underwear.  
   
“Oh, shit,” he said, and felt everyone’s gaze bore holes through him.  “Hey now.  It ain’t that bad, right?  We wear it under our clothes, no one’s gonna see.  It could be worse, I mean, it could be—“  
   
“Rain!” Sniper bellowed.   
   
They heard a door slam shut and the squeak of boots sliding against a wet floor; a few noisy steps, another squeak, and Sniper yelped.  
   
Scout was the first to get to the entrance of the base.  He found Sniper sitting up and surrounded by strawberries.  The brim of his hat was still dripping water and judging from the red stain on the front of his shirt, he’d been using it to cradle the strawberries in.   
   
“Lousy mop job Enigie’s done,” Sniper groaned, rubbing his side, and looked around with a confused frown, “Real lousy.”  
   
“Yeah, that’s not even half of it,” Scout said, almost stepping on a strawberry.  
   
He didn’t even have to explain what he meant since the rest of the team came running in, each of them shouting different things—Demoman was complaining about the chicken, Soldier was harping over the pink underwear, Spy was still angry at Pyro, and now Heavy was wailing about the laundry outside.  
   
“Scout, didn’t I say to tell Heavy that it was going to rain?” Sniper snapped.   
   
Scout didn’t remember anything like that, and was about to make an angry reply, but Sniper wasn’t even paying attention to him, just staring at the strawberries that were getting crushed by the team’s stomping feet.  
   
“Woah, woah! Everybody, quit moving around!” he yelled, repeating himself a couple of more times before everyone was looking at the floor, as though they were seeing the strawberries for the first time.  Most of them had been squished or trampled over, leaving tiny pools of sticky red juice.  Sniper did not look angry, exactly, but there was no hiding the small downwards tilt of his mouth.  
   
“JESUS CHRIST, MEN,” Soldier barked, “STOP STARING LIKE A BUNCH OF IDIOTS AND PICK THESE STRAWBERRIES UP. I’M SURE AS HELL NOT GOING TO WASTE THEM.”  
   
Normally Soldier’s ideas weren’t too great, but everyone seemed to agree with this one.  They all knelt down, trying to salvage the strawberries.  Demoman went to the kitchen and came back with a bowl to put the larger chunks in.  The ones that had been entirely crushed by their boots were left alone.  
   
“I did say that the floor will be clean enough to eat from,” Engineer assured, and Sniper smiled a little.  
   
When they were done, they had discovered that there were a few strawberries that had rolled off to safety—exactly nine, whole and untouched.  These, they let Medic handle with great care, putting them aside while the rest of the team went out in the rain to grab the laundry.   
   
The bed sheets were soaked by the time they got there.  Scout nabbed one, draping it over his head like a hood.  Unbelievably, that got a laugh from Engineer, who followed his example.  Pyro wheezed, and soon everyone was running towards the base with bed sheet capes flapping behind them.  
   
Medic stared as they came back, shaking his head.  
   
“Ach, just put them on the ground,” he said, “I will wash them again tomorrow.”  
   
“It seems that it will be another chore day tomorrow,” Spy added, laying his bed sheet over what was left of the strawberry carnage.  He sat down, wringing the ends of his shirt.  Apparently he was drenched enough to not care about his expensive clothes.  
   
Letting out a groan, Scout looked around the base, wondering how they were going to clean this up.  He slumped down next to Spy.  “This sucks.”  
   
Demoman tapped him on the head.  Scout looked up and saw the most beautiful slice of cheesecake he had ever seen, complete with a strawberry on top.  
   
“It’s still a little warm,” Demoman said, holding the dessert in his hands.  
   
Scout took the slice, noticing the lack of plate and fork because everything was still in the washer, but he grinned, “Man, that's the least of my worries.”  
   
Heavy and Sniper helped pass out the cheesecake to the team, using Spy’s knife to cut even pieces.  They ate with their hands, on top of a pile of pink wet laundry, surrounded by overturned furniture, and under a ceiling that dripped bubbles on their heads.  
   
And Scout realized the base couldn't have looked any better.


End file.
